‘Yes, but how are you going to make money?” It’s the question certain family members have been asking in one form or other for the best part of three years. Slipping a comment in with a smile, or as a parting aside, they have greeted my employment status and position as “a kept man” with confusion, bemusement and consternation.

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Deciding what to do for dad’s big day can be a frustrating task each June. eggs Benedict and a new necktie are a lovely gesture, of course, but do they really express the depth of your appreciation for the man responsible for half your DNA? In the end, most fathers would probably be equally happy spending some quality time outdoors with the family.

‘Yes, but how are you going to make money?” It’s the question certain family members have been asking in one form or other for the best part of three years. Slipping a comment in with a smile, or as a parting aside, they have greeted my employment status and position as “a kept man” with confusion, bemusement and consternation.

It was the blackouts that made Kevin realize he needed to change. Like most men in their early 20s, he socialized and drank to excess on the weekend. It was normal and fun. But when he started blacking out after drinking, he knew he had to stop. “I was waking up at home not knowing how I got there, not knowing what I had said to certain people the next day. It started building huge anxiety and stress.”

For years, the Kuenz family has been looking for the right space in which to run a fine dining restaurant and an event facility. The owners of Great Events, the official caterer for Spruce Meadows and one of the busiest and most popular caterers in Western Canada, wanted a place where they could hold big weddings and parties of all sorts. And where they could roll out their own brand of hospitality in a restaurant setting.

Canadian author Reva Seth panicked when she found out she was pregnant with her first child, three days after her wedding. “I hyperventilated in the shower, and then alternated between crying and escaping into sleep for the next few weeks,” she writes in her new book, The MomShift: Women Share Their Stories of Career Success After Having Children (Random House Canada, $29.95.)

Eby Heller and Jenna Jacobs walked hand-in-hand on the path beside their red chicken barn, Heller’s beach ball belly pushing tight against her winter coat as the couple grinned with anticipation of the upcoming birth of their first child. They walked hand-in-hand, too, just over a year earlier, Heller bent over in pain, Jacobs’ face twisted with dismay, as they exited a Montreal fertility clinic after another failed attempt to impregnate Heller with Jacobs’ sperm.

“Bennett, look at me,” says Elaheh Mokhtari. “When I say, ‘french fries’ you go, ‘pizza,’ you stop. OK? Ready?” Without a sign of acknowledgment, my six-year-old son is off down the bunny hill at Canada Olympic Park. Straight downhill, actually; his skis making a giant wedge and plowing the snow aside, and a smile creeping across his face as he ignores Mokhtari’s calls for “french fries!”

Everyone’s back to work today, swapping holiday stories with colleagues, re-adjusting to fluorescent lighting and drinking coffee without Baileys. What better time to consider tossing out tired old crap and bringing in fresh new ideas for 2014?

When I first started writing my Spirited Calgary cocktail column for the Herald, I penned a back-to-school shopping piece suggesting — tongue firmly planted in cheek — that moms tote along a little “mommy juice” that I named the “Walmart Walbanger,” to help them navigate crowded stores with screaming children in tow.

A group of special need youngsters are learning the wonders of dance thanks to an innovative program involving teachers from the School of Alberta Ballet. Two-dozen kids, who attend the preschool program run by the non-profit Heartland Agency in Calgary, are receiving weekly creative movement lessons — called Let’s Dance — at the organization’s head office in the Currie Barracks.

It used to be that kids changed sports with the season. Spring baseball was followed by soccer, which flowed into hockey or skiing during the winter months. But that has changed. Today’s kids are expected to choose one sport and compete year-round if they want to earn a spot on a competitive team.

For Julie DeBoer, pulling her son out of the community school — a convenient two-block walk from the family’s Inglewood home — was a difficult decision. Luke, 10, left after Grade 4 to attend Langevin School, a public school with a science alternative program and a focus on inquiry-based learning that is part of the Calgary Board of Education. “It’s something that we hemmed and hawed about,” says DeBoer who, along with her husband, volunteered at Colonel Walker, the local elementary school, and socializes with other parents in the neighbourhood. “But Luke’s a complete science nut. He’s so science-minded — if an electronic toy breaks he takes it apart and builds something new.

Some journal articles just kind of jump out and make you wonder. Consider “Testicular volume is inversely correlated with nurturing-related brain activity in human fathers.” Rough translation: guys with smaller giggle berries are better at taking care of, if not necessarily making, babies.

Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Charissa Destiny Calverley had her midwife pack up the placenta into a bio-hazard bag provided by the hospital, and put the package on ice. Calverley then called Susan Stewart of Pure Birth Services and asked her to come and get the afterbirth. Stewart took the organ to her Calgary home where she steamed it, dehydrated it, ground it up and then encapsulated it so her client would be able to swallow placenta pills daily over the first the several months of new motherhood.

Some family trees have branches that grow in diverse directions, binding people together in ways that go far beyond the traditional notions of mother, father and child. Across Canada, these types of non-traditional families are becoming more and more common.

A married couple in Ontario lives in constant fear that a stranger will gain access to their son because he donated the semen they needed to conceive. A man in Alberta fights to be declared a legal parent of his daughter after he and his partner split up. Parents in British Columbia wait months for their newborn son’s hernia operation because their names don’t appear on his birth certificate.

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